


Magnus Makes A Home

by finx



Series: It's All Fun And Games Until Someone Loses A kKsHKssShKsskK [3]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, The Raven's Roost Revolution, oh well except I guess for how this is a revolution and they fight for their lives a lot, specifically for Magnus' tragic backstory as recounted in The Eleventh Hour, spoilers for episode 48, the angst is entirely dramatic irony though, there is no angst in this fic just in canon, warning for a single non-graphic description of Kalen's shitty shitty governing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 01:06:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13729878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finx/pseuds/finx
Summary: Four times Magnus and Julia didn't propose





	Magnus Makes A Home

Magnus was bleeding, and that was hardly news these days but he’d been bleeding for so long that his vision was going dark and he couldn’t quite feel his legs. He could just about feel his arms, because they were still swinging, and his axe was still hitting flesh. If he could just keep swinging, just a little bit longer, just long enough for the others to get the prisoners away–  
  
There were no more soldiers in front of his axe. Magnus blinked a couple times, trying to bring his vision into focus. There was a blur of movement a few feet away, the heavy violence of melee fighting. Someone was taking out the last of the soldiers. Magnus stepped forward to help, only his legs didn’t get the message and decided instead to buckle under him.  
  
Someone caught him before he hit the ground, and crooned, “Hey, hey, none of that, big boy.” It was Julia’s voice, he’d recognize that voice anywhere, he’d recognize that voice if he were dead. Magnus fought against the blackness closing in around him, struggling to get back to the sound of that voice. He wasn’t going to die without seeing her face one last time.  
  
“I’ve got you,” she was saying, “I’ve got you,” and then she was singing something, something halfway between a lullaby and a hymn. Julia wasn’t a bard, but they’d all picked up a few tricks in the past few months, and the darkness started pulling away from Magnus, enough that he could open his eyes and see her face. She had soot in her hair and a smear of dried blood on her cheek, and she grinned in relief when Magnus opened his eyes.  
  
“That’s right,” she said, “don’t you go dying yet. Still gotta make an honest woman of me, remember?”  
  
Magnus tried to roll his eyes and tell her not to go getting ahead of herself, but all that came out of his mouth was blood. Julia’s grin vanished, and she took up her singing again.

  
**

  
A few days before that, Magnus had been taking his turn on babysitting duty, watching over the children of the revolution in the fortified playroom that used to be Al Winters’ basement. Susanna was on guard duty, Jamie was using puppets and illusion magic to tell stories to the quieter kids, and Magnus was in charge of distracting the more rambunctious ones. He was pretending to be an evil dragon when Julia came in, which meant he had four children hanging onto his arms and shoulders and at least three more weighing down his legs. One of them had clapped sticky little hands over his eyes, so Magnus was moving extra slowly and roaring, “I’m blind! The fierce warrior has blinded me!”  
  
He didn’t hear Julia come in – he couldn’t hear much of anything over the kids’ delighted shrieks and battle cries. He did hear her call out, “Lunchtime!” and couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face at the sound of her voice.  
  
The kids’ shrieks turned into cheers at the prospect of food, and Magnus lowered himself carefully to the ground as children detached themselves from his limbs and scampered off toward the stairs. When the last one had hopped off his shoulders, he looked for Julia and found her looking back at him, something soft and fragile in her eyes.  
  
Susanna, who as the guard should be the last to leave the room, was waiting at the base of the stairs for them to go up. Instead she met Magnus’ eyes, glanced at Julia, then winked at Magnus and followed Jamie and the kids upstairs. Magnus felt himself go beet red, but he was grateful nonetheless. It turned out when you were trying to run a revolution, a bit of time alone quickly became scarcer than diamonds.  
  
“Hey, Jules,” he said, stepping forward. She reached a hand out to him, and he laced their fingers together before pulling her in for a kiss. Magnus closed his eyes and let his whole world shrink down to this one moment, to the feel of Julia pressed up against him – the warmth of her lips, the slide of her arms up his back, the soft scratch of her shirt as he raised a hand to the nape of her neck and held her close.  
  
It was Julia who broke the kiss, and rested her head on Magnus’ shoulder. Her hair smelled of smoke and sweat, and she was trembling with pent-up tension and leftover adrenaline from her patrol. Her arms were clenched hard around his waist, and Magnus tightened his hold in return. It hadn’t been a good patrol, then. He kissed the top of her head and stroked a hand down her spine, soothingly repetitive, as he braced himself to hear whatever new horrors Kalen had wrought upon the city. The things they saw couldn’t be carried alone, they both knew that, so they carried them together.  
  
Instead she said, softly, “You’re good with them. With the kids.”  
  
“Well yeah,” Magnus said, surprised into honesty. “They’re basically like dogs.”  
  
Julia snorted. “What?”    
  
“Yeah, you just – you roughhouse a bit, make sure they play nice with each other, and if they get uppity you throw a ball for them to fetch.”  
  
_“What?”_ Julia repeated. She started to giggle. “You play _fetch_ with the _children?”_  
  
Magnus shrugged, halfway between embarrassed and delighted that he’d made her laugh. “Mostly with Meggo and Tick. They have the attention span of a cocker spaniel, throw something shiny at them and they just run after it.”  
  
Julia buried her face in Magnus’ shoulder to stifle her laughter. “Don’t let Terry hear you calling his son a cocker spaniel, he’ll kick you out of the militia.”  
  
“He can try,” Magnus scoffed. “Where do you think Meggo gets it?”  
  
“What are you gonna do, find him a treat and tell him to heel?”  
  
Magnus pulled back to give her a serious look. “I always carry treats in my pockets, Jules. You know this about me.”  
  
Julia finally dissolved into helpless laughter, the slightly hysterical kind that comes of too little sleep and too much fear for far too long. Magnus grinned, reveling in the sound of it. “Can you imagine,” she hiccuped, “the look on Dad’s face when you teach our kids to jump through hoops for their dinner?”  
  
Magnus’ breath hitched in his throat. They’d never talked about having kids – they never talked about the future at all, really. Some days it was hard to believe they’d have one. His voice was not quite smooth when he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll start with, like, ‘roll over,’ ‘speak.’ Baby stuff.”  
  
Julia laughed so hard she couldn’t breathe, and Magnus joined in, wondering how he’d ever gotten so lucky.

  
**

  
A week before that, they’d been cornered in a narrow alley in the Financial Column, one of the ones that dead-ended onto empty air. There’d been a bridge, before the fighting had started, one of the rickety wood-and-rope ones, but either the soldiers or the rebels had cut it down at some point, and now there was nothing but a pair of wooden posts and the sharp rocks far, far below. The soldiers would be rounding the corner any second now, coming from both directions, and Magnus had left his sword buried in someone’s chest three streets ago.  
  
Julia still had her knives, and she handed him one wordlessly as they both stood at the edge of the street, looking for any escape route at all. “Think there’s time to set up an ambush?” Magnus asked, almost conversationally.  
  
Julia turned around to appraise the alley, but it wasn’t the long and twisty kind. It was fenced in on both sides by high, smooth brick walls, the backs of office buildings squeezed so close to each other they might as well have been one building. There weren’t even any dumpsters to hide behind. “You might be able to boost me up to one of the roofs,” she said skeptically. “I could jump them from above.”  
  
“You just want to run off and find someone more handsome,” Magnus complained as he knelt and cupped his fingers together. “Someone who can join you in your exciting rooftop adventures.”  
  
“You caught me,” Julia said distractedly, backing up so she could get a running start. “I’m going to elope with a rogue who looks like Idris Elba.”  
  
“And here I’ve already promised your dad a spring wedding. You’re gonna make me look bad in front of my boss, Jules.”  
  
“Live through this one, Mags, and maybe I’ll reconsider.” Julia sprang forward, reaching Magnus in four bounding steps, and he launched her up into the sky.

  
**

  
  
Three weeks before that, Magnus had murmured into the dark, “Jules? You awake?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
Magnus hesitated, looking over at where she lay beside him, close enough he could lean forward and kiss her. It took him a moment to pull his thoughts together enough to say, “You know this is my home, right? I may not be from around here, but this is… this is where I belong.”  
  
Julia didn’t answer, but she rolled on her side to meet his gaze. He could just barely see her in the faint golden light of the streetlamps outside the open window. Magnus took in the curve of her cheek, the quiet stillness of her face as she watched him, patient while he searched for the words he needed to say.  
  
“You’re the reason for that,” he told her. “You’re… Jules, I…”  
  
She was so beautiful, limned by lamplight. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and Magnus was suddenly terrified, his mouth dry, his heart pounding. All he wanted to do was bury his face in her hair and never come out again.  
  
He’d never let terror stop him before, though, and he wasn’t about to start now. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he said, and Julia stopped breathing. Magnus gulped and kept going, almost babbling in his need to say it all. “I want to run the shop with you, I want to get a house and a dog with you, I want to… I want to grow old together. Fuck, Jules, I love you more than anything. You’re my home. I want to build a home with you.”  
  
Nothing moved. Not the curtains on the window, not the light from the gas lamps outside, not the shocked expression on Julia’s face. The moment stretched forever, on and on, unending.  
  
“I want that too,” Julia whispered, so quiet Magnus almost thought he’d imagined it. He let out a breath that was almost a laugh, somewhere between relief and disbelief. Julia shifted forward, toward him, and Magnus moved to meet her and draw her into his arms. His heart pressed painfully against his ribs, so full he thought it might burst. He tipped his head down a bit, just enough to bury his nose in her hair, and breathed in the scent of her, warm and alive and there, in his arms.  
  
He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, matching his breathing to hers in the dark. Long enough that he was half asleep when Julia said, “Ravens’ Roost is changing, though.”  
  
Magnus tightened his arms around her, involuntarily. The bodies in the square had barely looked like people any more. He’d recognized the scent of charred flesh before they’d turned the corner, somehow, but he hadn’t been fast enough to pull Julia away, to keep her from seeing. He knew the sight was haunting her as much as it was haunting him.  
  
“I saw Bobby today,” Julia said. It wasn’t a non-sequitur. Bobby Westfell had been talking for months now about rising up against Kalen, fighting for their city. It had seemed like nonsense, at first.  
  
“Yeah,” Magnus said. “Yeah. I think it’s time we talked to Bobby.”  
  
This time the silence was heavier. It was Julia who broke it, and her voice was fierce with conviction when she did. “We’re going to make this city a home again, Mags. And when we do… When it’s – when it’s over, and we’ve won…”  
  
“When we’ve won,” Magnus agreed. He pressed a kiss against the top of her head. “When we’ve won.”


End file.
